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Review Summary

This important Danish film is a scathing satire on the Danish love for order and security, and was filmed by and for Danes. It is based on the humorous novel Den forsvundne fulmaergtig by old-line Marxist writer Hans Scherfig. In the story, two men go missing at the same time. One is a lawless drifter; the other is a clerk, with a wife and two children, who works for the Defense Department. The clerk discovers that the drifter has died and switches identities with him. His family is protected by his life insurance policy, so he is now free to do whatever pleases him. He tries rural life for a while, but when the police arrest him for a crime they believe the drifter committed, he is not unhappy. Indeed, so pleased is he with the orderliness of prison life that he confesses to the crime so as to be able to remain there. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi